‘I’ll introduce you to a sample, my dear fellow, then you can ask them silly questions yourself. The goat-faced gent is the celebrated Wimbush — him, I know you’ll like to meet in person!’
CHAPTER FIVE
Gently took his tea in Glove Street, still without having returned to Headquarters. The cafe was a comfortable little haven, as useful for thinking as for eating. With a paper folded beside him he sat quietly puffing his pipe; a second pot of tea had been served him, and over the radio they were droning the cricket scores.
In all, he’d met four of the Palette Group members, without including their lively chairman. There’d been the youngster, Watts, and the melancholy Wimbush, Seymour, a still-life painter, and Aymas the Ploughman.
He hadn’t asked them very much, nor seemed too interested in them; he didn’t have the cards in his hand to make a strict interrogation profitable. His principal target had been Aymas, on account of his car, but also because he found him the most original character. And:
‘The dead woman, I believe, was a special friend of yours?’
Aymas’s ruddy complexion had deepened and his brown eyes became more indignant. He was a little over thirty and of a sturdy, large-framed build. He had a handsome if belligerent face and a romantic shock of thick dark hair.
‘But don’t you run away with the idea…!’
His hard, loud voice carried the stamp of the broad acres. It rose and fell in country cadences, it was sudden and pungent in driving home a point. Gently had asked him where his car had been parked, and Aymas, triumphantly, had told him that it was in Chapel Street.
‘Your slops must have sat there looking at it all the evening — if they’d come out in a hurry, it’d have sent them arse over tip!’
All the same, Chapel Street wasn’t as remote as was the Haymarket — remembering the footway, in fact, it wasn’t remote at all. Of the others only Seymour had had something direct to be asked him: he was one of those who admitted to leaving the cellar before Mrs Johnson.
But it was Mallows himself who had most strongly aroused Gently’s interest, sufficiently so to make him want to sit pondering the man. Just now and then one met somebody who stirred one fundamentally — colourful, tantalizing, challenging one to comprehend them. How much lay behind it, that gracefully worn lionskin? What batteries of private emotion lit the facade of public utterance? Mallows had held something back, of this Gently was certain: the academician suspected something which he didn’t intend to communicate.
Gently remembered Stephens’s hypothesis and his lips parted in a smile. The laugh would be on him if his protege had made a lucky guess! And perhaps it wasn’t so far out either, that diagnosis of blackmail. Mallows would have a lot to lose if his public character were assailed…
So absent-minded did Gently become that in going out he forgot his change. A smiling manageress recalled him, and he was not displeased to find that she knew his name.
He made his way across the marketplace, where pigeons were running among the closed-up stalls. The George III, a building coeval with its name, lifted a picturesque face above the brightly coloured tilts. It was tall and narrow and irregularly built, with handsome bow windows on its jutting first storey. The plasterwork had been painted a smooth pale grey, while the windows and elegant ironwork were a complementing shade of green. It stood on a slope and had a towering appearance, and behind it, softly baroque, brooded the majestic bulk of St Peter’s church.
In the bar, a few of the stallholders had gathered for a pint and they stared at Gently for a moment as he came up to the counter. The publican, a short man with a finely clipped moustache, wore a tight black waistcoat and was serving in his shirt sleeves.
‘Superintendent Gently… can I have a word in private?’
The publican winced as though Gently had used a rude word.
‘You can see I’m busy, can’t you…?’
‘I shan’t keep you for long.’
‘I’ve heard those tales before! Besides, what else do you want to know?’
But he put his head round the corner, where he shouted something unintelligible, and after a short delay a barmaid appeared. She had a sulky expression and was still smoothing her hair; the publican, after muttering to her, led Gently into the back parlour.
‘It plays hell with my reputation, having policemen keep coming here. You’d think, from the way they do it, that she was knocked off in my cellar!’
‘That’s something that I want to see, by the way.’
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place? We can talk there as well as here.’
The entrance to the cellar was from behind the bar counter, where a divided door gave access to a landing and a steep flight of steps. There was no need to switch on a light since the room below was lit by grating windows; in fact, apart from the staircase, it bore little resemblance to anything cellar-like. The walls were painted in green and cream and the floor was covered with a patterned lino. To the left, with a screen of dusty twigs, was a hearth and fireplace of mottled tiles. An old piano stood over in the corner and on the wall hung a fraying dart board; the floor was furnished with a few marble-top tables, but a number of chairs stood stacked under a window.
‘We call it a cellar, but it’s just another room. On account of it’s awkward to get at, we don’t bother with it as a rule. Then a party comes along and wants to have somewhere on their own… there’s a door into the alley, up that other flight of stairs.’
Gently nodded an absent response and took a few steps about the room. It was a prosaic enough place, that, for painters to hold their meeting in! The green-and-cream decor gave it a frigid, canteen atmosphere, while the carelessly stacked chairs were suggestive of a store. And in the winter, it couldn’t have been too well lighted for the viewing of pictures…
‘Can you hear what’s going on when they’re having a meeting down here?’
‘Not unless the door’s open, and we mostly keep it shut. They have so many rows that it disturbs the regular custom — when they want a round of drinks, they come up and knock on the door.’
‘But you can hear when they’re having a row?’
‘Blimey, yes! You can hear them all right.’ The publican made an expressive snatching motion with his head. ‘But you can’t really hear what they’re saying, not unless you open the top and listen. It’s just a grumbling sound, you get me? Like someone had stirred up a nest of hornets.’
‘Was that how it was on Monday night?’
‘That’s how it was, and a blessed sight worse. You wouldn’t believe how they carry on — and they don’t drink enough to be anything but sober.’
Gently pulled down a chair and reversed it for himself — not, like Johnson, to bring him luck, but because he preferred to lean on the back. From up the stairs one could hear the faint squeaking of the beer engine, but of the conversation in the bar not even a murmur filtered through.
‘You say that it was worse on Monday night?’
‘A blessed sight worse, that’s what I said.’
The publican also pulled down a chair and, rather awkwardly, emulated Gently.
‘Mind you, it started off quietly enough — rather surprised me, it did, at first. As a rule they’re pretty well warmed up by eight, which is just about the time when the regulars come in. But last Monday — no; they were like a lot of lambs. They must be mending their ways, I think. Of course, there was a grumble or two now and then, but that wasn’t anything to what we’re used to.’
‘How long did it last?’
‘The best part of the evening. There was a darts match in the bar between us and the Bunch of Grapes. Well, they were just coming up to the final throw-off when we heard them letting fly down here in the cellar.’
‘What time would that be?’
‘Oh, well after nine. We’d had the news on the wireless and then turned it off again. It was just after I’d handed down another tray of drinks — I hadn’t hardly latched the door up when they was at it, hammer and tongs.’